Moderna banks on OpenAI to accelerate mRNA research 

In an ambitious move, Moderna has teamed up with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, to further integrate generative AI (GenAI) across its mRNA drug development and manufacturing operations.

The collaboration, announced jointly by the two companies, aims to co-innovate by integrating OpenAI’s cutting-edge generative AI capabilities across Moderna’s operations, from legal and research to manufacturing and commercial functions. This marks a significant expansion of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT into the enterprise space, specifically within the pharma sector.

While the details of the deal have remained under wraps, a report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that approximately 3,000 Moderna employees will gain access to ChatGPT Enterprise, a secure, enterprise-grade platform built on OpenAI’s cutting-edge language model, GPT-4, through the partnership.

“Just as the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s changed the way we work and live, AI is on a path to completely transform our everyday lives - and OpenAI is helping to lead the way,” said Stéphane Bancel, chief executive officer of Moderna. “Moderna has an ambitious plan to launch multiple products over the next few years, and collaborations with companies like OpenAI are critical to our ability to scale and maximise our impact on patients.”

This is not the first time that Moderna, a self-described “digital-first” company, has leveraged OpenAI’s capabilities, nor the first time it has entered such a partnership, having teamed up with IBM last year. However, the collaboration between the pharma giant and OpenAI can be traced back to early 2023, when Moderna launched an internal version of ChatGPT called “mChat”, built using OpenAI’s API, which saw over 80% adoption across the company.

According to Moderna, this initial foray into LLMs accelerated an “AI culture” at the company, paving the way for the deployment of OpenAI’s enterprise-grade ChatGPT platform and a suite of specialised AI tools tailored for various business functions. In fact, in a promotional video published in parallel with this recent announcement, Bancel hinted that Moderna has ambitious plans to launch multiple products in the coming years, stating that, while rolling out 15 new products in the next five years would typically require a workforce of 100,000 employees using traditional methods, the company can achieve this feat with its current 6,000 staffers by leveraging AI capabilities.

Since adopting ChatGPT Enterprise, Moderna has deployed over 750 GPTs across the company, including assistants for advanced analytics, image generation, and various other tasks. Among these is Dose ID GPT, which aids clinical research teams in evaluating vaccine doses, with human experts leading the review process and AI providing augmented input.

With only one commercial product – the COVID-19 vaccine – Moderna faces pressure to diversify its pipeline rapidly. As the company invests heavily in expanding its non-COVID mRNA vaccine pipeline, the OpenAI partnership positions it to leverage AI’s full potential in accelerating drug development.